


The Strength To Stay

by BrooklynBugleBoy



Category: Queen (Band), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Adoption, Band, Brian Does not Compute, Brothers, Cornflakes and Whipped Cream, Crossover, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fires, Freak-shows, Freddie is Freddie, Gen, Hank Being Awesome, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Ignoring Canon, John is a Saint, John is a Salt Mine, Queen - Freeform, Roger Taylor is Angel, Roger Taylor is Angel Deacon, Wings, mutations, terrible childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 08:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16573340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBugleBoy/pseuds/BrooklynBugleBoy
Summary: When John Deacon was a little boy, he went to a circus that was really a freak-show and met a blonde boy with angel wings.This is everything that came after.*This is a gift to @chaoskirin on tumblr because of her awesome idea. Roger Taylor as Angel from the X-Men. (Totally not because of Ben Hardy ;)).





	The Strength To Stay

**Author's Note:**

> Some liberties taken with Queen and X-Men Movie Canon, Roger's Angel has pieces of many continuities, but is mostly Ben Hardy's version of Angel. :) ;) 
> 
> He also calls himself younger than John, mostly because as you'll see, his birthday and genuine age is kind of a mystery. So he's borrowed John's birthday with a year taken away for funsies.
> 
> And cause I felt like it. Honestly, this is a beautiful little clusterfuck. :) :D

“ _Take an angel by the wings_  
_Beg her now for anything_  
_Beg her now for one more day_  
_Take an angel by the wings_  
_Time to tell her everything_  
_Ask her for the strength to stay…_ ”

-Sia, “Angel by the Wings”

 

 

He was born with them.

Tiny bony protrusions fluttering almost like a ribcage, that jutted out from his back in a way that was _sickening_ when he moved. But were innocuous enough while he was clothed. Or in this case, _swaddled_.

But they were enough for his birth-father to snatch him from his bassinet before his birth-mother ever even _saw_ him. _(He liked to think fondly of her in his darkest moments, maybe she could have loved him. Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve…)._

Instead, his birth-father sold him to a seedy shadow-man in a back alleyway, a ringmaster of a sad rotating gallery full of fake freaks. Despite freak-shows being outlawed for nearly a century in their country, common people still craved the spooky and the macabre.

His particular asshole was just _delighted_ to have a genuine freak at his disposal.

The nameless, voiceless baby that was him, was chained up and laid down naked on straw, like some kind of wild animal.

The first lesson he learned in the awful place was: _nobody is ever going to love you._

He learned it after he caught a nasty fever as a toddler and only survived, because of the mutant blood in his veins and the strange downy wings that tore free from his back in a desperate bid to warm his hypothermic body.

He pissed and vomited on himself in the throes of illness and laid it in for almost a whole bloody month, before a new bucket of slimy water was tossed into his cage.

It had a strange shiny film on top, but he drank so much his belly grew swollen with it and he barely had enough left to wash himself with.

The shininess was surfactant.

_Detergent._

It didn’t kill him, but he puked through the bars of his wagon cage so _forcefully_ and in such a large quantity, that his oozy fluids almost hit the boot of the ringmaster. The asshole that had come to laugh and watch him suffer.

That mistake earned him a kick to the mouth, so hard that he felt his jaw _break in two_ on contact and rusty blood drip from the split peachy skin, like a fault-line tearing through the core of the earth.

He had to hold his jaw in the correct position while his healing factor took over. Lest the ability to eat what few scraps he got tossed, be taken from him as well.

The second was: _food was food, regardless of where it had come from._

He was often fed the same thing as the other big cats in the menagerie. Flyblown meat. Buckets of the stuff. It was all he’d ever eaten, aside from moldy vegetables when they were running short. The maggots who lived inside were a better tasting treat than the rotten meat he shoved in his mouth by the handful. But he always ate whatever he was given, and whatever he could get from outside the bars of his cage.

Well, however far he could reach until the chain around his neck yoked him like a beast of burden.

His body processed food differently than non-mutants, he would learn it in later years, once he finally had access to higher quality meals. His metabolism was scary fast and his bones were thin and hollow, like a bird’s designed for flight. _(Not that he had ever flown)._ He didn’t have body fat, any of it. He was built out of pure muscle, bone and sinew.

Far more animal than man.

The third was: _no rules mattered anymore, not when faced with a pair of sorrowful green eyes and a messy head of tawny brown hair._

It was after one of the shows, doused with scalding hot water to forcibly wash away the dirt of his sordid living conditions and trussed up to look like what his wings denoted him to be: _an angel._

Something otherworldly that could kneel in a cage and move its wings _up and down, up and down_. Something that could be wheeled around in its bird’s cage so that spectators could tug him and touch him in the most uncomfortable of ways.

Sometimes they actually ripped out handfuls, clumps, of his feathers.

Simply because they could, and bits of his bones and flesh made such a _groovy souvenir_.

He didn’t see the quiet little boy in the audience, who looked at him with such despair. Green eyes and tawny hair, freckles that dotted his rounded baby-soft cheeks. Something his own features had never been.

The same boy that had popped up next to his hay-filled caravan that night, gazing up at him through the bars.

“My name’s Johnny… Don’t worry,” Tiny hands found their way to the padlock. “I’m going to get you out of there.”

It was his only introduction, but then again, that was all he needed really. He was the first person to ever show any kindness to such a wretched creature. John used a little kit that he’d dragged from his backpack to pick the lock. Eyes shining brightly in the darkness.

That little boy used all the muscles he had in his lithe body to swing the heavy caravan bars open.

Then he offered a hand to the nameless shameful thing so often called an angel.

Johnny climbed up when he realized that the other child wasn’t coming down. His green eyes flicking around in disgust, taking in the awful conditions around them both. “How long have you been in here?”

The fallen angel shook his head. Big blue eyes tearing up with fear. His hands found the collar around his neck, as soon as the tears began to fall and he let out a little anguished cry. For the first, but far from the last, time… Johnny was there to comfort him. His breath smelled like popcorn and outside air, he could feel the little boy breathe as he picked the lock for the collar around the creature’s neck.

When it finally fell free, the little angel tumbled into Johnny’s hold completely. Good, considering his stick-legs were far too weak to carry him, they never had, and the ringmaster and his buddies would soon come to beat them both into unconsciousness. But that didn’t come to pass.

Johnny carried him from that wretched cage, and when they came upon his parents: Art and Lily, the two were only too happy to pick up both their sons and run for their car, for their escape.

He was safe, loved, free for the first time in his life.

_Wanted._

And instead of rejoicing, he cried.

  
-X-

  
_Angel Deacon_ , carrying both the names of a celestial heavenly being and a clergyman, grew up as the beloved younger brother of Johnny and the second-born son of Art and Lily.

A head full of thick messy blonde hair and big blue eyes, the perfect contrast to Johnny’s tawny hair and green eyes. Two joined hands as they raced through the garden, Angel’s wings spread open wide. Just enough to catch the smaller air currents. He was proud of them for once. His family made him feel proud of them. He was their Angel, and it was all he ever wanted to be. He was so happy.

Some of his best memories were of baking with his Mummy and Johnny, well, it was more like _they_ baked and _he_ played with the icing or ate anything sweet that he could find.

“Did you _eat_ all of it?!”

“…..No?”

_Yes. Definitely yes._

Their baby sister Julie was born soon after Angel came into the family and the three of them would one day be unstoppable together. But at their given age, the only thing they were unstoppable at was stealing mince pies from their neighbor’s windowsill.

Nobody outside the family knew about the wings and he would keep them hidden when he and Johnny went to day-school together, as well as every time they left the confines of the house and the garden. But at home, the wings were always out. He never had to worry about them. They were a part of him and they were _beautiful._

He and Johnny were something special.

Brothers through and through, they fought often and loudly. Johnny was quiet by nature, quiet but not shy, yet Angel was the only person who could really push his buttons. The younger boy relished in getting Johnny riled up. It was hilarious, until he got shoved off the roof.

_“You pushed me off the roof!”_

“You can _fly!”_

“But… _I forgot.”_

They gave each other hell for anything and everything, but at the end of the day, if one of them was sick or hurt, they would tear the world apart at the seams to get to each other. Then tear apart the person or thing that had perpetrated the hurt. Little Jules was the same.

Their Juju-bee, who had always had two big brothers who loved her more than anything, and looked at her like she’d personally hung all the stars in the sky. _(The glamour faded quickly the first time she ripped out a handful of his feathers. Jesus Christ, that hurt)._

The circus and that cage were little more than a distant clouded memory.

  
-X-

  
Then _the fire_ happened.

He woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of something that brutally singed the inside of his nose.

The coughing was involuntary and so was the shielding of his eyes as the whole room was suddenly ablaze with light, from the fire that scorched its very foundation. The house was on fire. The house was being gutted by it.

Angel was out of bed in an instant, wings pulled tight to his body and trembling beneath the thin cotton of his worn pajama shirt.

 _“Johnny!”_ He screamed, it was the first thing he thought of.

He crawled on his belly over to the door, cheap scratchy carpet burning his palms and tickling his nose. It was so hard to see through all the smoke. But Johnny’s bedroom was next-door and Julie’s was just across the hall. He had to get to them. Their parents’ room was downstairs, they had a clearer shot to safety, but all three kids were trapped upstairs and it seemed like that was where the flames were the hottest.

The door was warm to the touch, he knew what that meant, they’d learned it in school, he wasn’t supposed to open it.

He did anyway.

The gust of fire scorched his hands something terrible and he couldn’t even scream. He couldn’t afford to lose what little air his charred lungs had left.

Their alarms started to screech as well, undoubtably calling for help, but it was far too little too late.

When he got to Johnny’s door, it was even hotter than his own and it felt like his heart had taken up permanent residence in his throat.

He was terrified of opening the door, not sure what he would find behind the melting paint. Seeing Johnny with a wet towel wrapped around his nose and mouth and laced-up boots on his feet, shouldn’t have surprised him the way it did.

Johnny always was the resourceful one.

Until he did something stupid like ripping off his towel and wrapping it over Angel’s nose and mouth. Idiot.

He struggled against it, but Johnny wouldn’t let him take it off. “I swear to all that is holy, Ang. I will smother you with it. Come on, we need to get Jules!”

If he got the towel, Johnny got Angel’s chest and shirt. The younger teen held him there as the crawled, pressed against the wall, to get across the hall to Julie’s room. Her painted pink door was almost indistinguishable in their burning eyes.

When they wrenched it open, it was empty. _Fuck!_

Johnny was going limp in his arms, eyelids fluttering. He’d already taken in too much smoke for his non-mutant body to handle.

She’s probably outside. Angel reassured himself as he climbed out of her window with Johnny tossed over one shoulder. Probably outside with Mummy and Da. She’s fine.

The moment his bare feet touched down on the soft pillowy grass of their front lawn, his mother’s hands were on his face, brushing back his hair, checking to see if he was okay. Tugging the towel away from his nose and mouth, while Johnny was sat down groggily on the grass to become cogent once more.

“Oh thank goodness, you’re both safe! Your Da went back inside to get you two and your sister. Have you seen them?” She was shaking, crying.

He felt his heart stutter in his chest. _Oh God no._ He shook his head and his eyes flitted up towards the house, flames climbing out of every window, as if they were hands waving goodbye.

He knew what he had to do.

Despite the faces of their neighbors who surrounded them, the fire brigade on the way. He tugged his shirt over his head and let it fall onto the grass beside Johnny, unfurling his wings as soon as he could. Launching himself towards the closest open window.

They caught the air currents and he glided up there almost effortlessly. Only sparing a single parting look at his Mum and Johnny still on the ground, before throwing himself inside the hellfire.

His wings were fucking _durable._

He’d always known so, after all the sheer amount of times he’d stepped on them, people had ripped out feathers, he’d fallen backwards on top of them, or that time when he was more than stupid and used them as a landing pad, back when he was _unfairly pushed off_ the roof. It was pretty obvious the damn things weren’t going anywhere.

But he was also pleasantly surprised when he could use them as a battering ram to bust through Jules’ bedroom down and back out into the hallway.

Even more covered in flames than before.

“ _Da! Julie!_ ” He screamed. _“Where are you?!”_

Fighting his way down the hall and coughing from the assault on his already sore lungs.

He found them in the bathroom, or what used to be their bathroom. Julie up and hurled herself into his waiting arms and his poor Da was covered head to toe in soot and blood, but still looked surprised at the way Angel wrapped an arm around his waist.

 _Can you carry us both?_ Is what his Da didn’t ask. But the question was posed all the same.

And once he took flight out of another window, one held securely in each arm, he was happy to report that _yes, he could_.

Yet the moment he touched down, Julie was spirited out of his arms by Johnny, and Angel was slitting open his palm to press his bloody hand against the gaping wound in his Da’s abdomen. Sharing his healing factor. A neat little trick he’d discovered when Johnny and Julie used to fall and hurt themselves while playing as little kids.

Of course he was there to make it all better.

His father looked surprised and Angel didn’t know why. Weren’t you the one who taught to share?

Of course while his Da was healing, Angel looked up at a sea of shadowy faces.

Faces that seemed so familiar. Not because they were neighbors and EMS, but because for an instant he was back in the circus again. Trapped in that tiny cage, watching people stare at him in fear and disgust. Watching them laugh and jeer.

_Nobody will ever love you._

He couldn’t breathe, his heartbeat was whooshing in his ears and he couldn’t _breathe_.

_Nobody will ever love you._

His eyes flicked to Johnny’s as he lifted himself off his healed Da, hands outstretched in surrender. Still bare-chested, wearing nothing more than the pants he’d worn yesterday. _(He’d fallen asleep in them after coming home late)._ He was trying to convey how sorry he was, when the words got stuck inside and refused to leave his constricted chest. Eyebrows knitted together, face creased in all manner of angst. He couldn’t say _anything._

Instead he took flight, tears falling down his cheeks unheeded.

Johnny screamed for him.

Julie screamed for him.

Their parents’ anguished cries were wordless, but they tore at parts of him that he didn’t know existed.

He flew for days. Flew across the ocean, flew away from everything he knew. To a place he knew would be a haven. He’d dreamt of it once. A school for people like him.

When he finally got to the steps of Westchester, he fell into the grand doorway, completely exhausted.

And into the arms of a boy with tawny hair and green eyes, for the second time in his life.

  
-X-

  
Dr. Hank McCoy pressed a cup of warm tea with milk into his hands, looking at him with an undeserved sort of kindness.

“What did you say your name was?”

He focused on the swirling liquid like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

“ _Angel.”_

He didn't see the way Hank stiffened in his seat, looking at the alien wings that spiraled from Angel’s back, so long that they brushed at the ground. By the time the teenager looked up, it was only enough to see the way Hank wasn’t really looking _at him_ at all. He was looking past him. Surrounded by memories of another girl with wings who’d once called herself Angel.

Angel Deacon would learn the story of Angel Salvadore from Hank one night, the man whom years upon years spent together, would turn into his brother. Not his Johnny, but close enough for his own memories not to ache so much. To be so painful.

But on that first day, it was another man coming down the stairs, the outline of a syringe in his back-pocket and a small tight smile on his face, who welcomed him home.

For all the man’s brightness, it was obvious that he was in pain.

Children like Angel followed him around, forever underfoot and he would always give them the same bittersweet smile, lost in their games of make-believe.

“ _Dr. Charles Xavier_ , it’s wonderful to meet you.”

A man who would change his life.

“ _Angel Deacon_ , likewise.”

  
-X-

  
Charles, _(or Chuck/Charlie as Angel liked to call him because he was a fuckwad like that)_ , had been a _Johnny_ for a girl called Raven. Saved her, gave her a home, they grew up as brother and sister.

Then she left him for a band of scary murderous mutants, ones who had crippled him.

So he’d thought _The Professor_ would hate him, once he explained how he’d left the family of people who loved him. Left his own Charles behind. Because he was scared. Because he remembered the circus. Because there was no way _that fire_ had been an accident. Because everyone had seen his wings.

All he’d ever wanted was to keep his family safe.

So the safest thing had been for him to run away.

Which sounded like a weak excuse, even to his own ears.

Instead he got a little boy plopped into his lap.

One who could control ice and snow. Charles watching fondly as they interacted, even if dodging those pudgy fists meant often getting a face-full of snow by accident. Both of them pointedly ignoring the American news coverage just a few feet away, something was going to happen in Vietnam. Both of them knew it.

But for those next couple of years, he was happy at the school.

He found a second family with a boy named Alex, another boy named Sean, Hank, Charles and a dozen mutant children between them. Life was _good._

Even if he could never beat Hank in a footrace, flying was way more fun with Sean screaming supersonic beside him. Sometimes he would reach out and their hands would brush in midair. It was nice to reach out and find someone waiting there.

His wings were always out and about, healthy, puffed-up and preening with pride. He even convinced Hank to try out being blue for a while. It looked really cool and he told him so, multiple times until he thought it would finally stick. Charles was okay too for a while, he took his injections on time, his powers weren’t horribly affected and he could walk.

Then Vietnam happened and it all went to shit.

Alex and Sean got drafted.

Sean, despite the macho man persona he was always pretending to be, was openly raw and destroyed in his army fatigues the day he left. He grabbed onto Angel’s chest and buried his head into the soft skin of his little brother’s neck.

“I don’t want to go.”

His downy soft wings wrapped around them both.

“I don’t want you to go either.”

It was the closest they ever got to saying I love you. But that didn’t make it any less true.

Angel caught his redheaded brother’s face in both hands, smiling through his tears,

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

It was a lie.

Because Angel left once the war got into full swing. Went home to his England.

And Sean never came home.

  
Alex didn’t hug him goodbye. All they did was stare at each other. Content in the silence that years of close proximity could bring.

“Take care of yourself, Summers.” _I swear to God if your bitch-ass dies I will come rip you out of hell myself._

“You too, Deacon.” _Looking forward to it, little bro._

  
Things _changed_ after the boys left.

Charles spiraled, he started dosing up with Hank’s serum, not to walk but to drown out the all the voices inside his head. He lost himself at the bottom of a bottle and watching it all happen broke Angel deep inside. The children all left one by one, it wasn’t like they could really run a school with three “teachers”. Angel had barely finished secondary school.

But it was just blow on top of blow. Everything went to hell in a hand-basket and one day, Angel just couldn’t watch it anymore.

He simply packed up his things, a man who left the same way a boy had once come. And went down to Hank’s lab.

The moment his brother, his best-friend, saw the knapsack and the look on his face, Hank shattered.

 _“Don’t go._ ” He cried into Angel’s forever-tousled blonde hair.

Hank who loved to pretend he was too smart to have human feelings, who had survived his first love leaving him, who had survived battle after battle, war after war, watching his friends leave and die, watching Charles descend into depression and despair. Hank who just couldn’t take anymore.

“Please, it’ll destroy him. He’ll lose Raven all over again. The only part of him, the part of him that’s still _Charles_ …” Angel felt the ghost of another hand in his hair, one carding through the mess on his head whilst he read old books aloud on subjects Angel couldn’t even come close to understanding. It was just enough to hear Charles’ joy oozing through each word. “…it’ll _go_ with you.”

He left to the cacophony of an empty whiskey tumbler being thrown at his head, and Charles screaming abuse.

_“Leave me too then! That’s always the way isn’t it?! They always leave me! You were supposed to be different! But I forgot the rule! Nobody can ever love you!”_

_Didn’t he know it._

  
-X-

  
He fucked around in Scotland for a while, but of course he found himself wandering the streets of London before long.

Angel, or no _Roger Taylor_ now as his license denoted, played gigs sometimes. Freelancing with a couple of bands. He was passable at piano and guitar, but his real joy was the drums. Something he’d first picked up as a child, when he and Johnny took music lessons in school. He’d improved vastly over the years and playing was like his own special drug. It let him forget.

One of his buddies from a little band called _The Cross,_ that he’d helped out with for a while, dragged him to see a local band called _Queen._ They were playing over at Imperial. So he’d just assumed _why not?_

The last thing he’d expected was for his big brother Johnny to be rocking out on that stage. A bassist.

Johnny with long messy tawny hair and the same crinkly green eyes. Just seeing him felt like Angel was home again.

So he stayed out back and waited.

Like he was still a little boy again, trapped in a cage, waiting for Johnny to come set him free. Apparently a lot of roadies and groupies had the same idea as him. So if his big brother saw him, there was no evidence of it at first. Not until he and the rest of the band had reached the end of the throng and Angel was one of the last left standing there.

The singer, with his pretty dark hair and prominent teeth was the one who flounced over first. “Hello darling, aren’t you a pretty thing. Did you like the show?”

Johnny and the other bloke, a tall fellow with a head of enormous dark curls, got closer and he saw Johnny stiffen in his peripheral.

“Yea, it was good. Your bassist needs some work though. Johnny’s always had this little quirk where he actually plays a beat behind everyone else when he gets nervous.”

His voice was unmistakable. He saw Johnny grit his teeth and step forwards, fists clenched so tight that his knuckles were a skeletal white.

The singer looked between them in confusion and the guitarist just blinked. They knew they were missing something, just not sure what.

“It’s _John_. It hasn’t been _Johnny_ since I was fifteen. Not that you’d know that, considering the way you ran away from us a year earlier, you selfish little prick.” Oh, so they were jumping straight into that were they? Joy. “You have no right _to any of this! Oh Johnny this, oh Johnny that!_ You left us! We _needed_ you, we _loved_ you and you _left us_! Julie waited up for you every night with the lights on in her bedroom for _years!”_

Angel just blinked, taking it all in.

“Mum and Da never got over it! Hell, Da _died_ still believing that one day you were going to come home! And you never did! You didn’t even go to his funeral, you _insufferable_ little…”

“Da… _died?”_

Johnny’s rant petered off and he seemed to notice the way Angel was trembling, the awful look of shocked horror spreading across his face. Then the tears.

“…I thought you knew. We sent letters… His _heart…_ ”

The only thing Angel heard was radio static, shaking his head and stumbling backwards. Eyes stretched wide in horror. His Da died and he wasn't even…

All of the anger dropped away from Johnny’s face at once and he was reaching out.

“Ang, I thought you knew. We all thought you knew.”

His Da, who had taken him in, a man who already had a son and shitty job and a wife, who decide to take in a mutant kid he had no responsibility to. Who had run back into a burning building to get him. Who had waited years for him to come home, all in vain. Who had died disappointed in him. Who had died…

He made a low keening noise, falling to his knees and crunching in on himself. _No, no, no, no, no…_

“ _Angel._ ”

All it took was Johnny’s arms wrapping around him to make him fall to pieces. Weeping like a little child. “I wanted to come home, but I had responsibilities…” He incoherently babbled somewhere into Johnny’s hair. “I just wanted to keep you safe.” He whimpered.

 _“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…_ ” Became his mantra. Saying it over and over until he grew hoarse. Saying it over and over as he was led into the band’s van and taken home with them, falling asleep in his brother’s embrace. _“I’m sorry…”_

“Who is he?”

Freddie asked quietly, reaching over to run a hand through the slumbering boy’s golden blonde hair.

“My little brother, Angel. He ran away after a house fire when we were kids.”

Brian opened his mouth, just John cut him off, fingers playing idly with his brother’s sweat-damp locks. “No, he didn’t set the fire. But whoever did, we know they set it to hurt him, and us by proxy.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?!” Fred looked horrified. Their bassist shrugged, as well as he could with the weight of his baby brother’s head on his shoulder.

“Because of who he is, _what_ he is.”

Queen gained a drummer that night, the night John Deacon’s little brother finally came home.

  
-X-

  
They found out about the wings in the _stupidest_ way, my God.

Angel flouncing down the stairs of the apartment he and John both shared, shirtless with a bowl of cornflakes in one hand and a can of whipped-cream in the other.

“Hey Johnny, do you think this combo would taste good? I might also sprinkle some honey on top and I’ll also be sure to…”

Freddie and Brian were sitting on the couch with John. Freddie and Brian saw the wings that spiraled out of Angel’s _(well, Roger’s)_ back. Then John’s palm aggressively met his face.

“… _Share?”_ Angel finished weakly and Freddie nodded slowly.

“Oh. _Angel._ ” He looked like he was gonna be sick, or like he’d just snorted a line of coke.

And Brian fainted.

  
-X-

  
“You have _wings.”_

“Yes.”

“He has _wings.”_

“Yes, Bri. I’ve seen them since we were kids.”

“Do _you_ have wings?”

“No, Bri. Angel’s adopted.”

“…So Heaven’s a real thing?”

“He’s not actually an angel.”

“ _Oh_.”

_-Five minutes later-_

“You have _wings_ …”

  
-X-

  
The seventies were _Queen-based_ years. _Family-based_ years.

Even as they watched the outing of mutants and the Sentinel program’s downfall with horror. As Angel saw what became of Charles’ Raven. He still made music, toured, did what he was good at, just with a bigger family by his side. A family who accepted him _with_ his mutation and not _besides_ it.

Of course it all had to end sometime, as all good things are wont to do.

But he didn’t expect it to end in the middle of an 80’s concert.

With a giant off-purple toned asshole and a bunch of his groupies crashing the party.

“Join us, Angel. Be _my Horseman, my Archangel, my Angel of Death.”_

There, on the stage with thousands of people watching, countless seeing it on TV.

“Piss off.”

It was like being a teenager again. Surrounded by the accusing eyes of his neighbors. Just so much worse as the wings unfurled from his back. Because now the whole world knew what it all meant. But he stood there with pride.

Took John into one arm, Brian and Freddie into the other.

“I rather enjoy this world, I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“I can give you _vengeance_ on all who hurt you. All who refused to love you. Don’t you want _revenge?”_

Angel paused, a familiar smile twitching to life on his lips.

“Why would that matter to me? I have people who love me. _Fuck everyone else._ ” Said in true Freddie fashion.

Then they were gone.

  
-X-

  
He flew them to Westchester.

From sheer lack of other options and given their tour schedule, it was close enough. Of course, he also didn’t know if he’d be welcomed there after everything. Or if the school still stood at all. Perhaps it was the first place Apocalypse had taken. Maybe it had never recovered after the war and Charles losing heart.

Of all the things he’d expected to see when he touched down on that lawn. Including exclusion and the anger of those he’d once called his family. The damn place exploding was not in the top ten.

He touched down a few yards away from the enormous clot of people, children mostly, milling about outside. And Brian jumped out of Angel’s hold to go puke in the bushes. He hated flying expressly. Freddie was just gawking at everything. While Johnny simply blinked in stunned silence. The air was heavy with the tacky rustic scent of blood.

Angel _ran_.

Just as a yellow car careened over in the same fashion.

His wings allowed him to glide in a way that was nearly seamless and he reached the center of the throng without really trying. A silver-haired young man was holding a body in his hands. The body of a man with a familiar jawline and those Rapunzel blonde locks. Alex. Fucking Alex Summers was bleeding out in front of his eyes.

“ _Alex!”_ He gasped and practically ripped his brother out of the youth’s arms, laying him down on the pillowy soft grass he remembered fondly.

Shit, it looked like his whole torso was solely composed of burns and blood.

“I need a knife!” He called out to no one in particular. One was pressed into his hand by a familiar one. One that belonged to a tawny-haired boy with green eyes.

“Where’s the blue?”

He asked softly as he dug around in his wrist for an artery to nick. The blood sprayed all over Alex, like he’d intended, and a good pair of leopard-print jeans, but that was besides the point.

“Where’s the stubborn blonde kid I remember?” A touch of sadness clung to those words, nostalgic for a time long ago.

“He grew up.”

Another clump of kids rushed over. One with a visor taking the lead, and who made a sound that was a cross between a moan and a scream when he saw Alex. The boy had the same Summers nose and jawline, it wasn’t hard to make the connection. “He’s going to be okay. My healing factor is transmissible.”

His wrist itched something fierce as it healed, but everything felt better when he was wrapped up in Hank’s arms. “You came back.”

“Of course, I came _home._ ”

Alex was a close second though, _Mr. Too-Cool-For-A-State-Penitentiary_ finally gave up the ghost and wrapped Angel into the most bone-crushing hug once he was healed. “Welcome home, asshole.”

“Love you too, Summers.”

The moment was only broken, One, by the gravity of their situation and Two, by the silver-haired youth clearing his throat.

“Okay, so um… I don’t mean to interrupt, but aren’t you guys _Queen?”_

  
-X-

  
The battle was crazy.

It was a war against a veritable ancient god. He had never felt so far removed from the tiny limp thing tossed into an empty lion’s cage at a circus turned gallery of freaks.

He waged war with nothing but the wings and organic tissue that composed them. Wearing the guise of an X-Man, something that felt foreign and wrong against his skin. They watched the world around them, torn apart and remade.

His highlight was rescuing Charles, an exhausted Charles with no hair who looked mighty ill. But who teared up when he saw Angel. “You came for me?”

 _No I came for Hank_. He rolled his eyes. “Of course I did, you old sod.”

“I was wretched to you.”

“You were.”

“I was drunk and depressed.”

“You… _were?”_ A sharp nod. _Good, he was better._

“You came anyway?”

Another eye-roll. “Of course I did. You’re my _family_.” He was tearing up too _dammit_ and he hated it. When he hugged Charles, his wings fluttered and pulsed, wrapping around the both of them. And all was right in the world.

When the boy who always _ran, came back_.

  
-X-

  
Walking back to rebuild Westchester after everything was _surreal._

But running back into Johnny’s arms was something _else._

Freddie and Brian cuddled close as well. Brothers through anything, brothers through it all.

All the pieces of the family he’d made, coming back together again. He practically dissolved into a puddle of tears and joy. It didn’t matter if they had nothing. If they never got to tour again at all. If they were together, life was good. Life was _perfect._

He wasn’t born into his family, he made it himself.

  
-X-

  
“ _You can, you can do anything, anything_  
_You can do anything…_

 _Look up, call to the sky_  
_Oh, look up and don't ask why, oh…_

 _Just take an angel by the wings_  
_Beg her now for anything_  
_Beg her now for one more day_  
_Take an angel by the wings_  
_Time to tell her everything_  
_Ask her for the strength to stay…”_

 


End file.
